Free Mathilde 01 - The Cup of Ghosts by Paul Doherty Page A

and scribes, after the long day’s business was done, were eager for mischief amongst the English nation. I began to frequent a tavern, the Oriflamme, with a spacious tap room, not too clean; the rushes on the floor often squelched under my boots whilst some of the odours were definitely unsavoury. Nevertheless, this was where the English clerks congregated. At first they were sly-eyed and tight-lipped, but it’s wonderful what a flask of wine, a game of dice, joyful banter and a shared song can change. True, they were full of their own importance. They gave away no secrets; after all, these were clerks of the chancery, trained at their universities of Oxford or Cambridge in all fields of law and duplicity. What I wanted was not their secrets, only the chatter of the court, and they were most willing to share it. I rented a narrow garret with no window except a hole dug through the wall covered by a piece of hardened cloth. With Isabella’s silver it was easy to pose as the daughter of a French lawyer waiting for her father to join her from Dijon. If you pretend to act the mummer’s part, and retain the mask, the world, in the main, will believe you. Once they’d downed their cups and filled their bellies, the clerks regaled me (acting very much the innocent lady) with stories about the English court, especially the rise of Monsieur Gaveston, the king’s favourite, to the earldom of Cornwall.
    ‘Oh yes.’ One of them winked at me, tapping the side of his nose. ‘Earl of Cornwall Gaveston now is, bosom friend of the king, who calls him his dear brother.’
    ‘And the other great lords accept this?’ I asked.
    ‘Of course.’
    They chattered on, explaining how Edward of England had no desire to arrest the Templars in his kingdom, whilst he had little inclination for travelling to France, marrying the French king’s daughter or fulfilling the treaty’s obligations.
    ‘If he doesn’t,’ one narrow-faced clerk muttered, ‘there’ll be war and no more journeys to Paris. At least,’ he smiled in a fine display of cracked teeth, ‘until a new peace treaty is signed.’ He put his cup down.
    ‘And there’s the secret . . .’

Chapter 3

    The fraud of Rulers prevails,

Peace is trodden underfoot .
     

‘ A Song of the Times ’, 1272-1307
    Narrow Face, all pimpled and sweaty, stared at me, his half-open mouth slobbering food. He was trying to look cunning but, like all such men, he was stupid. He looked me up and down as if I was some mare at Smithfield Market, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. His companions had turned away; some were already arguing about whose dice they should use in the cracked cup, the others were distracted by one of those travelling players who’d appeared in the tavern doorway dressed in black, with the white outline of a skeleton gaudily painted over. He brought his own stool, stood on it and began to intone one of those tearful dirges about death:
     

When my eyes mist,

And my hair hisses,

And my nose grows cold,

And my tongue does fold,

And my strength slacken,

And my lips blacken.

And my mouth gaping . . .
    The students took up the refrain of this travelling English mountebank, probably some scholar from the English quarter trying to earn a crust. I was about to turn back when I glimpsed that face which was to haunt me all my life, serene and smooth under grey-dashed hair. It was the eyes which drew me, with their far-seeing gaze. The man was studying me intently. Someone moved between us and, when he passed, the man with the far-seeing gaze had disappeared. I felt the sharp edge of the table press against me. Narrow Face had lurched to his feet, leaning drunkenly across, grinning in a sickening display of yellow teeth.
    ‘Would you like to know the secret, ma jolie ?’
    ‘Of course,’ I simpered and, a short while later, I found myself strolling arm in arm with Narrow Face through the nearby cemetery of L’Eglise des Innocents. It was a macabre place,